INVERSUS. is a fast-paced shared-screen multiplayer game for up to four players. It is the type of game that would traditionally be local-multiplayer, and for a long time I thought latency issues would make it a poor candidate for online. Late in development, I committed to adding online support with the mindset that a “playable but inferior” experience would be better than nothing, but I ended up with something hard to differentiate from its local counterpart! While the subject of networking can cover everything from matchmaking, to choosing a map, and finally playing the game, I’m only going to be discussing the gameplay portion. I want to break down how I made the split-second actions of INVERSUS into a polished online experience.

It’s common to use an analog input method (control stick, trigger button) to control a digital system. Maybe you want to control menus with an analog stick. Maybe you want to detect a tap or double-tap of the analog stick. Or, as is the focus of this article, maybe you want to fire a bullet with an analog trigger. Getting this right requires more subtlety than you might expect.

When a game supports controllers, the player is likely using an analog stick at all times. Nailing the input processing can have a substantial impact on quality throughout the experience. Let’s walk through some core concepts along with examples from INVERSUS.

INVERSUS is a competitive and cooperative arcade shooter with a mind-bending twist. Player movement is constrained to opposite colors of a black and white grid. My walls are your paths and your walls are my paths. Each shot flips tile colors in an attempt to block, trap and close in on the enemy.

Interpolating between two points comes up all the time in game development. Most of the time, only a simple linear interpolation is needed. Linear interpolations are great because you can't really get them wrong. There is only one possible line connecting the points. Just follow it. When a curved interpolation is required, the solution gets far more complicated. There are an infinite number of curves to choose from and many methods for generating them: NURBS, Catmull-Rom, Bézier, Hermite, etc. I want to discuss a less common method that will generate circular shaped arcs.

Why would you want a circular interpolation? One reason might be that it is pleasing to eye, but it also has some practical use. If you are making a level editing tool that places roads (or making a game with procedural roads), you will may want turns to resemble their real-world counterparts. A second example, and the one I most often run across, is generating trails behind swords. Sword swings are often animated very fast. You only get a few sample points as the sword arcs through the attack. If you play the animation in slow motion, you'll find that the tip of the sword takes a rather circular path. By generating circular arcs between the sample points, a clean trail can be generated.

Here's an example of the sword trails I programmed for Spyborgs. There might have been only five or six samples along the whole spin, but I was able to create a smooth arc of vertices. The Spyborgs algorithm was a bit different from what I'm going to present here, but generated similar results (they were actually slightly worse if you know what to look for).

So, how are we going to create these curves? The solution lies in a piece of geometry called a biarc.